Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Tocqueville: A power that is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild and seeks to keep men in perpetual childhood

Tocqueville also predicted the current danger to the United States (and, through it, to the world), notes
Joel B Pollack on Breitbart.com, notably "the slow imposition of Obamacare in the United States, delayed only
so that it might never be defeated, creeping gradually into every aspect
of life, administered by agencies already shown to be hostile to
freedom."

The words of Alexis de Tocqueville in Book Four, Chapter VI of Democracy in America are particularly poignant:

I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic
state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer
singular facilities for the establishment of despotism...

I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic
nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the
world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their
memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey
the whole of the idea I have formed of it, the old words despotism and
tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot
name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear
in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an
innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly
endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they
glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the
fate of all the rest,--his children and his private friends constitute
to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he
is close to them, but he sees them not;--he touches them, but he feels
them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his
kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his
country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which
takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch
over their gate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that
authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on
the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content
that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but
rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but
it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness;
it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities,
facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs
their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking
and all the trouble of living?

This, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man
less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a
narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The
principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has
predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as
benefits.

After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in
its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then
extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of
society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform,
through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters
cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not
shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it
to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power
does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but
it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till
each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and
industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and
gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily
than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and
that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty
of the people....

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave
men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined
to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if
it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other.Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day, and is felt by the
whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance,
but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the
exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and
their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a
few important but rare occasions, only exhibits servitude at certain
intervals, and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is
vain to summon a people, who have been rendered so dependent on the
central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that
power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however
important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the
faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus
gradually falling below the level of humanity.

I add, that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and only privilege which remains to them....

A constitution which should be republican in its head, and
ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to be a
short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the
people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its
representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon
return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.